12/16/2023 0 Comments Outdoor bokeh movie 4kNobody wants a completely shallow depth of field, otherwise it will look like it was shot in a studio. This trend is still followed today by most cinematographers. You could make out the background, so you were still in the story. T2.8 provided cinematographers the best balance between shallow depth of field and deep focus. It’s still hard to focus moving subjects at T1.4 in 8K. So whatever advantage monitors and electronic systems have introduced, higher resolution has taken away. Focus mistakes are way more obvious in 4K, and even so in 8K. Today, there are aids, but unfortunately higher resolution has balanced that out. Focus pullers had to use all their experience and concentration to keep a moving actor in focus. Remember, they didn’t have monitors in those days. Shallow depth of field also meant focus pullers had a terrible time following actors. The last reason cinematographers stopped down was probably the most important one. But even these lenses are sharper stopped down to T2.8. The Master Primes are known to perform very well at T1.3, they are sharp and cinematic. You’ll never find an equivalent photo lens series that all open to the T1.3, at any price. Great cine lenses like the Arri Master Prime series open to T1.3 across the entire range. This is the biggest problem with cheap lenses that open to f/1.4 or higher today. This also meant if you used different focal lengths, the sharpness across the entire range matched. The general rule of thumb is the lenses have to be stopped down by two stops for best sharpness.Į.g., if you had an f/1.4 lens, you had to stop down to f/2.8 for best sharpness. Lenses are not the sharpest when wide open. This is true of almost every lens on the planet, with a few rare exceptions. Imagine going through all the trouble of learning about film stock and lighting, only for something stupid like lens flare to ruin your shot through lack of contrast. Flareįlare is not just those cool streaks of light you see, it’s also a loss of contrast. Lenses in those days weren’t as advanced as today, so if you opened the aperture all the way, you had three major problems. So why didn’t these cinematographers open the aperture all the way if they could have? Some scenes in Taxi Driver were shot wide open, especially the night shots, you can see the distinctive triangular bokeh, which was not always popular: Taxi Driver Taxi Driver was shot on Zeiss Super Speeds that were a T1.4. The Godfather was shot with Bausch and Laumb Super Baltars that were T2.3: The Godfather These lenses were available back in the day when cinematographers used T2.8. To get this effect you open up the aperture to its highest rating, sometimes T2 or T1.3 on traditional cinema glass – if you had the option. The other end of the spectrum is shallow depth of field, where you have no clue where the actor is. This cuts light by a tremendous amount.Įvery step in the aperture scale cuts one stop of light, or double the light. If you want everything in the frame to be in focus, you must stop down the aperture. Movies like Citizen Kane had to use tons of light, for their deep focus look. If you stop down or close down the aperture, you get deeper depth of field: Citizen Kane When you open up the aperture, you get shallower depth of field: Interstellar They had to strike a good balance between practical lighting and what is tolerable. Too much light would have cooked film sets and the actors, well over legal tanning limits. This meant they had to open up the aperture for good exposure or use a lot of light. They didn’t have the ISOs modern cameras have. The corresponding ISO is about double the exposure index, according to Kodak. They were working with an Exposure Index of 50 or 100 most times, even today. LightĬinematographers always had to fight the low sensitivities of film stock. The higher the number, the smaller the aperture, and the lesser the light hitting the sensor. The aperture number, called f-number, decides how big the aperture opening is. Why is one used for photography while the other for cinema? Why do cinematographers pick T2.8?
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